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Helping to build a data store and analysis capacity for malaria
Dear Guido
I am, as you perhaps know, quite involved with malaria, and perhaps we
will become associated with the NCSA at the University of Illinois to
run a cyberenvironment (CE) about mosquitoes and malaria in
cooperation with the Gorgas Center at the University of Alabama.
Broadly speaking I hope that much of the science will be Africa based
from the various institutes around Africa (ICIPE in Kenya for example,
and I believe there is one in Ghana or is it Benin, or maybe both!)
... and I am also determined that the data becomes Open rather than
disappearing into an academic silo never to be seen again.
I know something about the database world ... but I am getting too old
to stay up to date ... and perhaps I was never very good anyway! But
on the other hand I believe you and your colleagues have the skills
needed. Do you have any interest?
Sincerely
Peter
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FROM NCSA
Peter,
I think you have hit on a key point. There is very little that can be
done in the CE that couldn't be done with a wall map and coloured pins
given enough manpower and time. The full benefit of the CE comes with
scale and reusability. We need to make it clear, and I think you
have, that the CE is intended to be usable in any country and that the
initial development costs will not need to be duplicated when we move
to different regions/countries.
I am not an expert in geospatial data mining, but from what I have
seen of the capabilities of clustering algorithms, I would expect Don
Roberts to be correct. We should be able to cluster at the level of
individual houses.
We will be looking for a database analyst to understand the logical
data processes and design the accompanying database schema.
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Peter
Guido Sohne via sohne.net
9/28/07
to me
I regret to say that while this is interesting, today is the effective
start date of an employment contract between myself and Microsoft that
prohibits me from offering advisory services to anyone whether paid or
unpaid, except as part of my duties.
However, you may be interested in taking a look at the SQL Server 2008
beta, which includes support for geospatial data :-)
From Peter Burgess
9/28/07
Dear Guido
Congratulations ... I wish you well. Naturally I am disappointed that
you cannot help in the way I had hoped, but that is outweighed by what
sounds like a great personal opportunity.
Keep me in mind if you need a dumb guinea pig to test anything!
With best regards and best wishes
Guido Sohne via sohne.net
9/28/07
to me
That is very nice of you. Other people have been ... less kind :-)
I will certainly keep in touch with you and would be interested in
keeping current with your exploits. Who knows?
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